Falling Skies
Silver Lake Stronghold, Laxisour, B12 "Five minutes in, and we're getting a hailstorm of gunfire? There guys sure know how to greet visitors." Landell said to Jenny in an attempt for levity. She smiled back sadly. "There are twenty times more men in here than there is ours. We've miscalculated." Schumander piped up from his cover. "Now I wish we hadn't broken off from the rest." "It was our choice, and the responsibility is ours," Landell said. He was wheezing now. "But yeah, I wish we didn't splinter off. Where the hell are Shaw and McIntyre anyway?" Somewhere else within the stronghold They had been walking for only five minutes, but Shaw could tell that something was wrong. "I think we've been here before." "We can't have," said colonel Daniel Winters, "we'd have marked it." Shaw scowled. The only reason Winters had agreed on this mission was to avenge his older brother, Karl. "You think there's another power working here?" "Why not?" "You're reading too much science fiction." The halls growled, and began to shift before their eyes. "Oh, damn," Shaw spat and raised his gun. "we're in for a big..." He never got to finish his sentence, because right then, two hundred UCF troopers materialised out of nowhere in front of them. He swore instead. McIntyre was having much more of a problem then either Shaw or Schumander. There was nowhere to go. The room they were in had suddenly decreased in size, trapping them is a box area, while liquid mercury was pouring from above. Someone had tried to swim upwards, but was pushed down by the weight of the liquid metal. There was nothing else to do but await fate, as their oxygen supply - designed to last twenty-four hours - failed and they died from mercury poisoning. "I'm sorry, guys," McIntyre said, "but I think this is the end." "I tried the resonator, but the walls are plated orichalcum," Sergent Jenkins piped up. "So there is absolutely no way out?" "I'm afraid not." There was silence for a few moments. "There is a way." McIntyre turned to see Sarcos, holding a nuke in his metal hands. "You're insane! That'll kill us all!" He lunged and tried to grab the nuke, but the sea of bodies prevented him from doing so. "Don't you dare!" "I invented those suits, you know," Sarcos said proudly. "And?" "They're nuke proof," he said matter-of-factly, then jammed the trigger. Jake thought, I wish James was here. And the nuke went off. Beta-55 Satellite, orbiting Laxisour, B12 On the monitors nobody was viewing, an energy spike could be clearly seen eminating from McIntyre's position. It went unnoticed as no staff were on duty, but if any were, they'd have sworn to god that it was a three-kiloton nuke going off. Which was a lot closer to the truth than they'd have thought. Five hours of battle later, Schumander, Landell and Sirovsky were practically zombies. Five hundred bodies laid around them. The wounds varied; Schumander was hit twice on one leg; Landell was somehow unscathed; Jenny was bleeding where a bullet had hit her in the abdomen. "I think we did okay," said Landell. To McIntyre and his men, it seemed the sky was crashing down towards them, as they rose from the thick soup of mercury at such great speed, they looked like dolphins leaping from the water when they finally pulled free. The soldiers were launched out of the lake by the force of the nuke, and fell back into it again. Sarcos surfaced first, his crackling laugh all over the intercom. "Told you it would work." McIntyre's head poked out from underwater (under-mercury?). He did another head count. "Dammit," he muttered over the intercom. "Stewart and Lansky are gone. I have Drew, but her life signs are weak." Sarcos looked around at his handiwork. The soldiers were surfacing now. "I don't see Gareth anywhere." Jake looked around, suddenly alert. "The technician?" "Yeah, I think. He was in the room with us, but..." "You idiot, Sarcos; he had a time-stop!" Jake splashed the mercury in anger. "He was our key to stopping Cyril!" The only other people with a time stop...was him and Schumander. Shaw felt the jolt from behind him. Having recently taken cover behind an overturned table. When the troopers had appeared he had lost twelve, or thirteen men - he wasn't sure. The enemy had mostly been taken out by plasma grenades, but there were still fifty or so. As one man walked past the table he was hiding behind, he used his resonator to vapourise the legs off him and finished him off executioner-style. Another thing he noticed about these soldiers were that they didn't seem to know what they were doing either. The enemy was as confused as they were. Schumander risked a peek around the corner. He saw a massive library, with more text within than he could ever imagine. Inching closer, he could make out a person standing, looking at a shelf stacked with manuscripts. It was Cyril. He took aim. This is it, he thought, and pulled the trigger.